| Method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings -> Monitor Keywords |
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Method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetingsMethod and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20080077416, Method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001]This invention relates generally to collaboration software, and particularly to a method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002]Agile software development is a conceptual framework for undertaking software engineering projects. Agile software development methods focus on adapting quickly to changing requirements. Agile software development is particularly suitable when requirements are emergent and rapidly changing. [0003]Communication is one of the first tenets of Agile software development processes. One of the project management practices that teams find very helpful is a daily "scrum". A "scrum" is a brief meeting at the beginning of the day (a brief daily check-in) where each person on the project answers three questions: [0004]What did I do yesterday? [0005]What do I plan to do today? [0006]What is impeding progress? With these simple, brief statements a person's progress, objectives, and concerns can be quickly communicated. These questions generally provide adequate detail to establish expectations, create accountability, communicate distractions, and raise schedule or risk issues. The scrum meeting is not a forum to solve problems. If someone else within the team has ideas on how to help, the individuals meet outside of the scrum huddle to work through the issues. Ideally, this means face-to-face, co-located teams. However, in larger development organizations, co-located teams have become a luxury and not the norm. [0007]Conventional approaches to this problem include conference calls, individual emails, and blogs. These approaches have significant drawbacks. Holding scrum meetings by conference call still requires the team to meet at a common point in time. This is an issue for teams with wide time zone differences (e.g. United States and Europe or United States and India). Individuals on a team can email answers to the questions to each other, but this haphazard approach distributes storage of check-in entries to the email recipients. Blogs are too free-form. They allow entries to become too long, which runs counter to the principle of the brief daily check-in. [0008]Thus, it would be desirable to provide a low transaction cost method for teams to answer the scrum questions and receive scrum information from team members where a common scrum meeting time and location are not feasible due to geographic constraints or disparate work schedules. It would also be desirable to be able to manage how team members answered scrum questions to conform to brevity and timing requirements. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0009]Accordingly, the present invention may provide a low transaction cost method for teams to answer scrum questions and receive scrum information from team members where a common scrum meeting time and location are not feasible due to geographic constraints or disparate work schedules. [0010]Additionally, the present invention may allow management of how team members answered scrum questions to conform to brevity and timing requirements [0011]In an exemplary aspect of the present invention, a method for managing virtual team collaboration meetings includes steps as follows. A team member enters answers to the scrum questions, subject to user-defined answer length restrictions. A reminder is sent to a team member if scrum answers are not submitted a within user-defined time frame. A brief notification is sent to registered team members when a team member updates scrum answers. Scrum answers are stored and browsing access is provided to the stored scrum answers. RSS (a web feed format used for Web syndication) feeds are also provided of team member's latest scrum answers. [0012]Team members submit their answers to scrum questions at the beginning of their day-in their time zone, in their work schedule. Brief answers are enforced by limiting the number of characters allowed. If team members neglect to submit their answers to scrum questions they are reminded to do so. When team members submit their scrum answers, emails are sent to the set of registered email addresses to notify interested parties. Collaboration and accountability within the team is increased, ultimately increasing productivity. [0013]It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention as claimed. The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate an embodiment of the invention and together with the general description, serve to explain the principles of the invention. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0014]The numerous advantages of the present invention may be better understood by those skilled in the art by reference to the accompanying figures in which: [0015]FIG. 1 is a flowchart of a method for managing virtual team collaboration meetings in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention; [0016]FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a method for managing virtual team collaboration meetings in accordance with an alternative embodiment of the present invention; [0017]FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating the function of components of a virtual scrum tool in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention; [0018]FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating the function of components of a virtual scrum tool in accordance with an alternative embodiment of the present invention; [0019]FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating the interaction between a user and a virtual scrum tool in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention; Continue reading about Method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings... Full patent description for Method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this Method and apparatus for managing virtual team collaboration meetings patent application. 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